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Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 06:47:26 +0100
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From: Hagen SANKOWSKI <hsank AT nospam DOT chipforge DOT org>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: [geda-user] FOSDEM
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Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

Hello.

Quoting Jason White <whitewaterssoftwareinfo AT gmail DOT com>:

> I really like Lua (for ease of use) and Python (for the language and
> libraries). I suspect Lua is lighter-weight and more straight-forward
> to technically implement.

As worker in the ASIC business for more than 15 years, I highly recommend
file formats and languages (for scripting) which are

- already saturated; this means no changes in syntax over night which drive
   you crazy handling different version (e.g Perl 3 -> Perl 5)
- well and open standardized; by well established authorities like ISO,
   IEEE, ANSI etc. (quick & dirty kitchen-sink language hacks are a no-go)
- comfortable for the the community (do not follow current short-living
   fashions)
- quite easy to use (without to much head ache in writing new stuff)
- usable in even two or more decades ahead (did someone still remember the
   hottest languages like Pascal, Modula, Smalltalk, Prolog, Occam .. from
   even the 80's?)

Every small change in language or file formats can cause customers to waste
away effort they already did for circuits and flows.
Sorry, while the kids today at universities have courses in Java for learning
programming, Java is only *one* example of a torture language, nothing more.

Imaging, your teacher is using Klingon as the language to describe common
grammars, does that mean you use this Klingon as language for your  
daily live???
I guess, you do not.

Respecting the points above, languages which seems to be quite  
old-fashioned to
Youngsters and  
Visual-/Java-/Ruby-/Lua-/Go-/Scala-/<younameityourself>-Hipsters
might be even better.

I am comfortable with Scheme and Tcl for scripting and pur ASCII (7-bit got an
standard now - yeah) for file formats (YAML?). Quite easy to parse, even with
the next upcoming fancy holy language. And yes, the incompatibility between
different EDIF versions was a toxic gift.


Regards,
Hagen Sankowski


-- 
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin (1775)